


Even With My Eyes Closed

by JazzBaby466



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Childhood Memories, Dreams and Nightmares, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzBaby466/pseuds/JazzBaby466
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>As much as I could envelop myself in Lexie during the day, sleep irrevocably and fatally brought back the real me. I could walk and talk and play and laugh and debate and do everything as Lexie had; but I could only dream as myself.</em>
</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>  <em>I always thought that the scary thing about my usual nightmares was the fact that they might be foreshadowing events of the future. What I underestimated – what I have always underestimated – was the inescapable, breathtaking, inevitable pull of the past.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Even With My Eyes Closed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taeyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeyn/gifts).



_And in the darkness,_ _a shallow voice_

_And it hears all._

_I bite my tongue, there’s a fever,_

_I will not let it show._

To Be Alone, Ben Howard

 

 

 

My recurrent nightmares had been one of the worries I’d had before stepping over the threshold and entering Whitethorn House. Of course, there were infinite chances to get burned during the day: a giggle in the wrong moment, a smile two seconds too late, a false like or dislike, a question I should know the answer to or surprise at some detail that would never faze the real Lexie. The whole operation had been a tightrope walk from the beginning, but at least during the day, I could take these steps one after the other and I could simply refuse to look down.

Nighttime was of a different nature entirely. As much as I could envelop myself in Lexie during the day, sleep irrevocably and fatally brought back the real me. I could walk and talk and play and laugh and debate and do _everything_ as Lexie had; but I could only dream as myself.

Rob knew about my nightmares. I had them more often when he wasn’t around; alone in my homely, familiar Sandymount flat where the windowsills were adorned with those seashells I had found on the beach and collected over time. But a few times, he was there when I awoke sweaty and spluttering and fumbling wildly for my gun.

I hated everything about those dreams: their repetitiveness, their predictability, the way they stayed with me throughout the day and sent occasional chills down my spine like small reminders. Most of all, I hated the way Legion still held enough power over me to influence my subconscious in this way. When the possibility of having one of those dreams inside the house first occurred to me, I tried to convince myself that a hint of posttraumatic stress would only be natural after surviving a stabbing (although, funnily, I should know, and dealer boy putting the knife into me never affected my sleep any). But after Rafe and I had that conciliatory talk outside and he told me about the time without Lexie, everyone constantly waking everyone else up with their screaming as they came out of yet another nightmare, I found myself really wishing for a few weeks of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.

It was granted to me, mostly. And I don’t think I ever wasted a single thought on Legion. Instead, the dream that finally found me was infinitely more painful and twisted, and touched me much deeper in its novelty and uniqueness. The dreams about Legion are always hard to get through, but at least I know the drill at this point and, like I said, the repetitiveness of them almost bores me. This dream reached right inside of me, found a place much deeper and put a finger on a wound I had forgotten existed.

I always thought that the scary thing about my usual nightmares was the fact that they might be foreshadowing events of the future, because Legion being a man of his word and making good on his threat was an actual possibility. What I underestimated – what I have always underestimated – was the inescapable, breathtaking, inevitable pull of the past.

I was five years old again, at our old home; the first and truest home of my life. It was winter and already dark outside, though the clock on my wall indicated that it was no later than seven o’clock. In my dream, I had recently learned to read the clock and I was proud that I could make sense of its meaning. A single candle was burning on my bedside table. My mother had lit it before me kissing me good-night and sending my father into the room. She was normally the last to tuck the blanket around me and put out the light. I wasn’t sure why this night was different.

“Cassie, listen”, my father said, one hand placed tentatively on my small shoulder. I knew, then. There was something tugging at my memory. They had explained something to me a while ago, but I couldn’t quite remember.

“What, daddy?” I looked at him intently.

“You remember your Aunt Louisa and Uncle Gerard, don’t you?”, he started out gently.

I nodded. I knew they existed, I had some vague sense that I was related to them. I remembered seeing them occasionally, but I couldn’t remember ever talking to them. I had no idea whether or not they liked me.

“Good”, my father judged, with a small smile. “Very good. Well, you see, your mother is singing in Kilkenny tomorrow, and it’s quite a while away, so I’m going to drive her there and we’re going to spend the night.”

I stared at him. _Am I coming,_ I wanted to ask, but the words were stuck in my throat. I already knew the answer.

“We’ll bring you to Aunt Louisa’s and Uncle Gerard’s and you’ll spend the night there, alright?”, he informed me, creases around his eyes softening his features. I was still staring blankly, but he looked at me endearingly, then gently placed a stray curl behind my ear. “Alright, Cassie?”

I couldn’t reply. As I looked at him, suddenly it felt like I was being pushed backwards and he was being pulled in the other direction, away from me. I felt a rush of anxiety stronger than I had ever experienced. It wasn’t specific. Not like monsters under my bed or big dogs biting me. I had started coping with those silly fears that other children had early on; they weren’t a problem. This was something different entirely: a sense of foreboding that knocked the air out of my lungs and dizzied me, like the shrill call of a vulture circling overhead.

“Don’t”, I managed, and tears were running down my cheeks before I could even feel them form in my eyes. I was shaking suddenly and I saw the surprise on my father’s face.

“Cassie, what – “ , he inquired in a soft mumble.

“Please don’t go!”, I cried out and he put his arms around me and pulled me towards him. My face was pressed against his chest now and I was sobbing into his cardigan. The feeling was still there, as urgent and captivating as ever. “Mum and you can’t go to… to…” I tried to recall the name of the town, but failed. In my mind, I was imagining a dark, lawless place somewhere very far away. “You can’t go. Please don’t leave me behind. Please just stay.”

Now, my father put his hands to my shoulders and plucked me from his chest to hold me at arm’s length and look at me, red-faced from crying and absolutely terrified.

“What _is_ the matter with you?”, he asked in astonishment. “I’m sorry you can’t come with us. But why are you so scared of staying with Louisa and Gerard? You know them. They love you. They’ll take good care of you until we’re back.”

“That’s not it!”, I tried to explain, flailing my arms in a desperate attempt to escape his grip and run to my mother. “Let me tell mum! Let go of me, let me – “

But instead, he just hugged me to himself again. “Your mother already kissed you good-night, Cassie. Be reasonable. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. It’s just for one night, I promise.”

His voice was so gentle, his words so reassuring, and yet they were no match for the terror inside of me, the unbearable idea that it might be for more than just one night.

“I’m scared”, I sobbed against his chest, over and over again, until he had made out the words.

“What are you scared of? Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

I looked up at him, my eyes overflowing and tears wildly streaming down my face, and choked out: “I’m scared for _you_.”

He frowned for a moment, then put on that same, reassuring smile and shook his head mildly.

“Don’t be ridiculous”, he said.

“I’m scared for us!”, I tried again, feeling desperate. “I don’t want us to be separated! I’m scared. Please don’t go. I want us to stay together, _dad_!”

My voice got shrill and had turned into something like a wail towards the end. This was when my father lost his patience. I could see the change in his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous”, he repeated and pushed me back onto my bed with subdued force. “It’s just for one night, Cassie. We thought you were old enough for that. We are going; it’s decided. You can stay with Louisa and Gerard for one night.”

This was when I knew it was pointless and despair joined my terror. I curled up into a ball and cried and cried.

“Cassie, calm down”, my father said and rubbed my shoulder a bit clumsily. I was tired and the crying was wearing me out. Soon, tears began to leak silently and my father probably figured I was almost asleep. He didn’t send in my mother. He didn’t say another word. He only bent down to kiss my forehead and left, and as he got up from my bed and blew out the candle, every fiber inside of me ached for him to stay, and my forehead was burning where his lips had touched me, and I wished he could hold me again and mark me as his somehow and form a bond that couldn’t be broken, but I didn’t say another word, because I knew it was pointless.

 

I awoke from that dream with wetness on my cheeks. The feeling of loss was so real; it took me at least a minute to adjust. Eventually, as I sat in the darkness and let my eyes run over Lexie’s belongings to reassure myself of my surroundings, it occurred to me that I should consider myself lucky. I had not dreamt about Legion. I had not woken up screaming, granting everyone else in the house a sudden, unpleasant interruption of their sleep with an extra helping of unwelcome throw-backs to that first week without Lexie.

But even with those obvious benefits in mind, it was hard to feel anything but pain as I sat there, with the feeling of my father’s kiss still lingering on my skin. On top of that, the intrusive thoughts kicked in. _Dream or memory_ , the voices in my head were whispering urgently. _Dream or memory?_

I only have a few memories of my parents. I keep them locked away in a room deep down. They’re only allowed out once in a blue moon, if I open the door. But this one had burst through it and come to me with no invitation. And as tempting and intoxicating as the thought of another memory about my parents, another precious jewel in my collection was, the idea that I had known something bad was going to happen and that I had been unable to stop it, felt like an icy hand around my heart.

I don’t know for how long I sat there, trying to push the images back into their designated corner at the back of my mind. I did not think about my parents unless I wanted to. That was a rule I had lived by up until that point.

But Whitethorn House was like this gravity-free space in regard to all things internal. While the rules of the physical world still applied, those governing the worlds inside us no longer did. Inside was out, upside was down. Here I had been scared that I would have my normal, usual nightmare about a boy who had once threatened to rape me.

Clearly, I had underestimated the house.

 

After a few failed attempts, going back to sleep proved impossible. And now that my mind had cleared some, I noticed something else. I wasn’t the only one who was awake. The house was never silent. The wood had a life of its own: it creaked and moaned of its own accord. But that wasn’t it. I could clearly make out footsteps downstairs. And suddenly, I felt like an intruder inside Lexie’s room again, stared at by her possessions and the gaping absence of herself.

I got up and then, out of some strange instinct, I took off the wire. I knew how irresponsible that was, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I figured that since it was night, nobody was probably listening in anyway. And there wouldn’t be any reason to check the recording later and spot the fact that the sound of my breathing wasn’t on the tape. So it seemed fairly risk-free and I craved a moment to myself, no surveillance, which is why I left the microphone and the cables and the battery pack in a drawer in Lexie’s commode, for me to put back on once I returned.

As I began walking, I realized how strange I felt. Surreal, scorching, weightless, like some kind of liminal being. I thought back to the wine Daniel had offered me that evening and wondered briefly, the same way I had on that first night, whether there might have been anything other than wine in it. Next, I wanted to laugh at the mere idea.

I thought about walking into the kitchen for a glass of water or anything cool, really, to soothe my throat. I cried so rarely, those few minutes of it had scraped at it painfully. Then, I paused when I heard voices from Justin’s room.

I’d love to say it was the detective in me that snuck up to it and listened in an attempt to gather intimate information about these potential killers. But that would be a lie.

What you have to understand is that nothing was the same in that night. I didn’t feel like a detective anymore. I didn’t feel like I even had a mission. For a few hours, everything I did was based purely on intuition. And I don’t mean that famous undercover instinct Frank keeps going on about. I mean something much deeper, much purer. I mean that thing five-year-old Cassie felt that made her cry out and beg her father not to go.

The door had been left slightly ajar, or, more likely, somebody had attempted to shut it, but it had opened again the way doors inside Whitethorn House tended to if they weren’t closed with the necessary amount of force and determination. Like I said, the wood had a way of its own.

Unsurprisingly, I identified the mumbling voices from inside as Rafe and Justin’s. Almost equally predictable were the distinctively private sighs and moans that accompanied their hushed words. I stood frozen, as all suspicions I had had about them materialized into certainty, and thanked myself for leaving the wire in Lexie’s room. Frank didn’t need to hear about this.

Under ordinary circumstances, I’m sure I would have been uncomfortable listening to those sounds that clearly weren’t meant for my ears. I may be a detective, but voyeurism as a concept has never appealed to me on any level. It was just that I was still caught in that dream-like haze. I was simply standing there, unjudging and uninvolved as a ghost, as the moans grew and intensified.

“Shh”, I heard Rafe’s voice, then Justin’s moan, muffled by a pillow or maybe Rafe’s hand.

Their breathing sped up in that unmistakable way. Justin was trying to say Rafe’s name and something else, but he was tripping over his words, and they were muffled by something again. The rustling of blankets, quick, stuttering breaths, and then, that satisfied groan of finality and the following sighs of relief.

For a few moments, they remained in comfortable silence, and I stood listening, uninvolved as ever, only watching my fingers run slowly over the wooden door frame. Then, just like the wind near the ocean can switch direction on a whim, the mood suddenly changed.

“Why are you even here?”, Justin asked Rafe, making no attempt to conceal his accusatory tone.

More rustling of sheets. They were shifting, moving away from each other.

“Why am I here? What’s that supposed to mean?”, came the offended reply.

“What do you _want_ from me, Rafe?” Justin somehow managed to sound both pleading and harsh at the same time.

“What do _I_ want from _you_? Are you joking?”

Their voices were rising and I took a step back intuitively.

“As a matter of fact, I’m quite serious about this”, Justin hissed with uncharacteristic assertiveness. “You come to me, _that night_ you come to me, and then hardly ever again after Lexie comes home.”

“That’s not – “

“It’s true and you know it! And I can never even tell when you’re going to slip through my door! And then you treat me like that during the day – “

“Like what, Justin? I treat you like what?”, Rafe inquired, exasperated.

“Like you hate me!” I could tell that he was on the edge of crying just from the sound of his voice.

“Oh, please”, Rafe groaned. “Please don’t start crying now. Fucking hell, Justin.”

“Right. I’ll turn into _Daniel_ then, if that’s what you want. Turn off _all_ emotions just like that!”

“That’s not what I meant. Stop being such a fucking drama queen.”

“There! That’s exactly what I mean!” They were becoming so agitated now, I took another step back. “You insult me like that every single day!”

“It’s not an insult if somebody tells the truth, Justin.”

“ _God_ , you are so vile!”

“Hey, you weren’t bloody complaining three minutes ago!”

“Stop! Don’t _be_ like that, Rafe! I know you don’t want to be like that!”

“Thought you didn’t know what I want.”

“I _don’t_. But if you feel like…” He was interrupted by a badly concealed sob. “If you feel like you can just come to me _whenever_ , and then say whatever you like during the day and even _right afterwards_ , you’re wrong. The others are even noticing, I swear –“

“If you stopped being so dramatic and easily offended all the time, Abby wouldn’t have to console you the way she does.”

“You’re making it worse! You know what? Just leave, Rafe. Just… leave.”

What pulled me back into the whirl of shadows inside the adjacent bathroom exactly a second before Rafe burst out the door, I couldn’t have told you. It might have been sheer luck or the deep intuition that seemed to tint everything that happened during that night. There’s no way of knowing.

It’s also possible that Rafe hadn’t even noticed me if I had remained right where I was. He looked incredibly upset when he came out of Justin’s room. I could see how much effort it took for him not to slam the door before he marched downstairs, back to his own bed. In the half-dark, his tousled blonde hair stood out and his features, even when contorted by intense emotions, were as delicate as ever. I watched him disappear in the dark of the house: a modern-day Dorian Gray; a perfect body harboring a tortured soul.

The sound of Justin’s muffled crying reached me through the door. It occurred to me to go in and comfort him, but the idea seemed bizarre. This fight concerned only him and Rafe. And I didn’t feel like he was going to confide in Lexie. Even if I had, I doubt that I would have gone in. The night had wrapped us all in our separate bubbles. And they could touch, for a moment, but they couldn’t burst. We were all of us on our own.

When I felt certain that Rafe was in his room, I continued my descent toward the ground floor, placing my feet exactly where his had been. The wood steps were worn from generations of people treading them. At this point, I knew how they felt and how they sounded. I could have run on them with my eyes closed without tripping. I wondered how long it had taken Lexie to get to know the details of the house, whether there was anything I knew, like some tiny hole on the banister where the wood had chipped off, that she hadn’t discovered.

Everything was strangely intense. It was the heightened perception that comes with undercover work times ten and turned upside down. I could feel every hair on my body and every pore in my skin. The carpeted floor beneath me felt like it was vibrating against my bare feet. I felt the air rush in and out of my lungs. But none of it served to ground me. The surreal feeling never left.

The door to the living room had been left ajar and through the crack, I spotted somebody sitting on the sofa. The posture alone would’ve told me it was Abby, but the shape of the person served to confirm it. She looked so small, so frail, yet she sat upright and stared ahead into the darkness, handling some object in her hands that I identified as the poppet a moment later.

Everyone inside this house had a few habits that may have seemed odd to outsiders, but I had long since got used to them. Daniel liked to slip the odd Old English word into his sentences. Justin came out with melodramatic quotes to fit the most mundane of situations. Rafe sometimes sat at the piano for an hour or two without playing a single note. I’d become used to all of it, even Abby’s ambitious restorations of old objects that bordered on creepy, but her working on the doll all by herself in the middle of the night was certainly strange, even by our standards. And as I stepped closer, I noticed something else. She was crying. There were small, silent tears running down her cheeks in a constant stream.

“What are you doing?”, I whispered and she looked up at me, seemingly in a daze.

“Lexie”, she said then, quietly, and as she smiled a small smile at me, more tears formed in her eyes.

I came closer, slowly, carefully, as if I was afraid that sudden movements might scare her. The subtleness of my approach was so uncharacteristic of Lexie, but in that night, it didn’t even seem to matter. I noticed now that her stitches on the doll were fast and careless. The morning would reveal them as useless, I was certain. Even worse, the tears were blinding her so much that every once in a while, she hit her own finger instead of the fabric. The flinches were minimal. She continued as if nothing had happened, but she was guiding the needle with so much force, ramming it into her skin like that must have been painful.

“What’s going on?”, I asked, trying for Lexie’s unbothered tone, which came out horribly wrong in the situation. “Don’t you feel like tomorrow might be a better time for your little voodoo project?”, I went on anyway. After all, tact hadn’t exactly been one of Lexie’s strong suits, either.

“Sit with me”, Abby pleaded, ignoring the question and sniffling quietly, but not making an effort to wipe the tears. “Just for a moment.”

There was no way I could have said no to her, even if I had wanted to. My eyes had adjusted to the dark so much at this point, I could make out the freckles on her cheeks where tears had left their salty trails and more were constantly running down.

“Why are you crying?”, I whispered, but she only shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on something invisible in the distance again, but even though she didn’t look at me, we sat so close, our shoulders were touching, and I could feel the way the small sobs were lifting them on every breath.

“Do you remember when we first met you, Lexie?”, she asked eventually.

It was the kind of question I didn’t have an answer to. The kind I would never have an answer to, unless they told me. These were the precious memories that I would forever envy the dead girl.

“Of course I do”, I assured her vaguely.

But she didn’t need specifics. She could see it all in front of her mind’s eye, she was reminiscing, and she was going to tell me.

“You were working at that café, remember?”

This time, she required no more than a small nod.

“I don’t even know why we went in there, to be honest. We were just walking along and Rafe was craving coffee or something. We had never gone in there before, you know.”

“It was a nice enough place, though”, I argued. An unnecessarily risky shot in the dark – the café could have been godawful, for all I knew – but I felt like Lexie had been too quiet for too long already.

Abby smiled fondly without looking at me. “It was alright”, she agreed, to my relief. “I liked those armchairs they had. But I don’t think we would even remember it today if it weren’t for you. We were talking about poetry. Love poems, to be specific. I’m not sure how it got started. We probably started out talking about something completely different and went off on a tangent. More likely than not, Daniel saw something outside that reminded him of a poem he’d read and he quoted it to us. Or perhaps he made some clever remark about love in the post-modern age compared to Victorian times. I can’t recall.”

The memory in its vividness was soothing her pain a bit. Her features softened, and the tears eased up a bit.

“I believe Daniel was giving us one of his speeches. And Rafe would have probably interrupted him eventually, but he was just so happy with his coffee. And then afterwards, we were thinking of examples of love poems we each liked and just as you were walking by, Justin mentioned _A_ _Letter to Daphnis_. Can you believe the coincidence? He could have mentioned any love poem he knew, but for some reason, he settled on this one. And Anne Finch being one of your favorites, Lexie!”

She was looking at me now, her eyes shining bright with tears and reflected moonlight.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you had walked by a minute before or afterwards. Or if he had simply thought of a different poem. But no, this was the one he chose, and in passing, you glanced at him and said: ‘Love isn’t the only thing Anne Finch wrote about, you know?’ And it was so casual, so spontaneous, but Lexie, it opened my eyes so much!”

“It did?”, I asked softly, smiling at her.

“Oh, yes!”, she confirmed, mirroring my smile back at me, only ten times sadder, and a hundred times more intense. “Before you pointed it out to me, I was never aware of how much women writers get reduced to all things pretty, all things sweet and romantic, all things feminine. If there’s even a touch of rebellion or anything political in a man’s writing, people will take notice. But if it’s a woman? They’ll brush it aside, forget about it, dismiss it. And if a woman is both, romantic and rebellious, it’s simply too much for most to wrap their minds around.”

She paused, placed the poppet on her lap slowly. “Not for you, though, Lexie”, she whispered then. “Not for you.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help expand your horizons! And I didn’t even need an entire monologue the way Daniel does, but only a single line”, I offered, trying for cheerful once again, but she was too wrapped up in the past to even hear it.

“We were all of us just stunned”, she continued, slowly turning the doll in her hands. “The fact that you had even heard about Anne Finch, and some of her less popular works, too!”

This struck me as curious indeed. Lexie must have simply come across this writer by chance, maybe in her former life, and by some weird coincidence, it was also the one Justin mentioned when she walked by in that café. It was the only reasonable explanation, but somehow, the thought that Lexie meeting the other four had been mere happenstance made the skin on my neck prickle. It was the feeling you get when you think about the way your parents met and how easily they could have missed each other. It shook my very core.

“You were going to just keep walking and serve those cakes you had, but I grabbed your sleeve, do you remember? I didn’t even think about it. I just couldn’t let you walk away like that. So you sat down in Rafe’s armchair, remember?” She giggled softly at the memory. “He looked like he didn’t even know what was happening to him. Suddenly there was this witty, beautiful girl squeezed into the chair with him, taking up space and arguing about poetry with us! And saying such clever things, too. And then he tried to challenge you, but your comebacks were so quick and so funny! He was impressed, I know he was. We all were, Lexie. You had to finally serve those cakes, but we couldn’t just let you get away. So we invited you to join us in that pub that night and you agreed. Part of me thought we would never see you again; that we had just collectively hallucinated you.”

“Maybe you did”, I joked. “Maybe you’re just all still hallucinating me.”

I had been going for light-hearted again, but the night took my words and twisted them into something terrible. Both Abby and I shivered at the same time, and I wished so much that I could take them back. _I’m real, I promise!,_ I wanted to scream. To reassure her or myself, I didn’t know.

“But we saw you again”, Abby whispered into the dark. “And when we started talking, it was like we had always known you. It was like, we didn’t even know how much we had missed you until you arrived. And we talked forever that night, didn’t we? And somehow, by the end of it, we were all reciting poems to each other in that noisy pub. Daniel started it, I’m sure”, she added as an afterthought, with a fond smile. “And you picked Anne Finch’s _Friendship Between Ephelia and Ardelia_ , Lexie, and I will never forget.”

And with that, she leaned back and closed her eyes and moonlight washed over her face, turning the tear trails on her skin into streaks of silver, and she recited in such haunting clarity:

“Therefore farther now repeat, what is friendship when complete? ‘Tis to share all joy and grief, ‘Tis to lend all due relief. From the tongue, the heart, the hand. ‘Tis to mortgage house and land.”

And at that, the tears started up again, flowing more freely than before and she picked the doll back up and resumed her angry stitching.

“I just wish”, she said, choking on her words. “I wish things could be like that again! I just want that night back, that first night. That first time when the five of us were together.”

“I know”, I replied hoarsely. “I know what you mean.”

And strangely, I did. I thought briefly of Rob and the night he had found me in the rain. Sips of hot whisky, talking, laughter. But there was more to it. The night in the pub, though I hadn’t been there, I could feel it, too. The energy that united these five; I knew they had felt it, like planets suddenly aligning.

Abby was sobbing openly now and hitting her fingers with the needle again and again. Single drops of blood were forming on her hands, threatening to drip onto the doll’s dress.

“Abby”, I whispered and reached out to take it from her hands. I didn’t expect her to, but she let me. I put the doll into her lap and she raised her hands to her mouth slowly, to stanch the flow of blood.

Feeling suddenly compelled, I turned towards her and began wiping the wetness off her cheeks with my sleeves. She sat still, didn’t even look at me.

“Go to bed, Lexie”, she said then, still staring into the distance. “Go to sleep. It’ll be better in the morning. It’ll all be better in the morning, I’m sure.”

There was a strange finality to the way she said it, a kind of gentle authority that she must have picked up from Daniel. I wanted to stay, I wanted to make things better, but deep down I knew that my entire presence in this house was only going to make things worse in the long run.

Also, my arms felt heavy and tired and a weird tingling sensation had spread through my entire body. Part of me wished I was back in bed. Another part, however, feared the world of dreams I might get catapulted into once I closed my eyes. And yet another part desperately pleaded: _Make it dreams, not memories. Please, no more memories._

“Wake me up before breakfast tomorrow?”, I suggested to maintain at least a hint of normalcy.

“You mean today”, she corrected, with a small smile and a soft touch to my shoulder. “Go to sleep, Lexie. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I nodded and left her alone with her thoughts and the poppet, the way I had found her.

 

I had decided to go back to bed and face whatever sleep would throw at me. And I made it up both sets of stairs, but on the second floor, it happened. I don’t faint easily, so I barely remembered the feeling. But from one moment to the next, there were black blotches floating everywhere around me, the tingling feeling in my arms intensified and my legs gave way. I found myself thinking of Sam and Frank and Murder and Undercover and as I slid down the wall towards the ground, a deep terror rose inside of me and before I could control myself, a whimpering sound escaped me.

The black spots grew before my vision, like a collection of black holes in space, ready to expand and pull me into them. I closed my eyes to shut them out and whimpered again.

Nearby, I heard a door open. Seconds later, strong arms were wrapped around my body and my head was resting against a solid shoulder with a familiar smell of clean wool and a hint of smoke.

“Daniel”, I whispered, still terrified.

“Lexie”, he answered, and when I lifted my heavy head, he cupped my face with both hands, pleasantly cool against my skin.

“What happened to you? Why are you out here?”

“I’m scared”, I whispered urgently. It came from deep within me. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. “Daniel, I’m really scared.”

He frowned, pressed his lips together, brushed sweaty hair off my forehead. “Have you remembered anything?”, he asked then, watching me attentively. “If you have, it’s very important that you tell me.”

“No, no!”, I cried out, desperate because he didn’t understand. “It’s not that! It’s nothing like that! It’s not about the past, it’s about the future.”

He looked uncertain, but the big hands remained on my face, steadying my head. His eyes were so close to mine, I could have counted his eyelashes. He was wearing his glasses, which told me that he had been awake, even before he had heard me out here. This night, it seemed, simply had not been meant for sleeping.

“The future?”, he inquired. “What do you mean?”

“This”, I exclaimed and looked around at his bedroom door, then mine, then downstairs to where the others were. “All of this isn’t going to last, don’t you know that? I shouldn’t even be here! I’m not meant to be here! I’m going to destroy everything! That’s why I’m scared, Daniel! Not for myself, but for _you_!” And quietly I added: “And for us.”

There was something like alarm in his expression now and his hands moved from my cheeks to my shoulders.

“Lexie”, he said beseechingly. “Do you want to leave? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

I stared at him, shook my head with my lips parted in surprise. “No”, I whispered. “God, no.”

And that, at least, was the truth.

The sternness in his eyes wavered and, at length, made room for gentleness.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I want to stay with you. That’s all I want. I promise.”

“Well, in that case”, he said, took a deep breath and smiled. “Everything is going to be alright.”

“No, no, no”, I tried to stop him, mortified at his unjustified relief. “I want to stay, but that’s precisely the problem, you see? I’m not going to be able to stay! Because none of this is going to last!”

“Shhh”, he shushed me softly and I could tell he wasn’t even properly listening to my words anymore. “You’re confused, Lexie. You’re not well. You should sleep and if you’re still worried in the morning, we can talk about it then.”

But I knew that the morning wasn’t going to do. In the morning, I’d have the wire back on and my mind would have cleared enough to know that all those things I had said had already been taking it too far; that another word could mean the end of my career. This night, I felt, was the only chance to make him understand.

“But listen to me, Daniel!”, I tried one more time, but he pulled me closer until my face was buried in the crook of his neck and all I could do was feel his skin coolly against mine and the soothing rhythm of his steady breathing against my frantic one.

“You’re not well”, he repeated. “Let me help you to your bed.”

And I knew then that it was decided, that any more attempts to open his eyes to this danger they were all in would be futile, and I gave up and collapsed against him. As he had promised, he helped me up, steadied me, then placed me gently in Lexie’s bed. Like a parasite, I wrapped myself in a blanket that wasn’t mine, placed my head on a dead girl’s pillow.

“It’s all going to be okay”, Daniel assured me. “I’m going to listen to you tomorrow when you’re in a better state. And don’t worry. You’re safe.”

But it didn’t help, because ever since that day with my father, when had anybody ever listened to my warnings? And when had I ever been safe again?

_This is what happens_ , I thought. _This is what always happens. I tell the truth and nobody listens. I see terrible things coming and I try to tell people, but nobody listens._

And I thought of my father, and I thought of Legion and I thought of Rob, all while staring into Daniel’s face.

“Good night”, he said warmly and adjusted the blanket around me one more time.

“Good night”, I choked out, and then, I let him go, because what choice did I have?

And as I lay there, I thought of Abby downstairs with her bleeding fingers and of Rafe staring at the ceiling and of Justin crying into his pillow and Daniel sneaking across the corridor back to his room and even with my eyes closed, I could see them all.

 

When I awoke in a messy tangle of sweaty bedsheets the next morning, everything felt so different. I thought back to the images of last night: both sharp-edged and blurry at once. Everything seemed so intense in retrospect, so tragically exaggerated. And I couldn’t help but wonder how much I had really seen and how much my mind had enhanced and added.

At breakfast, everyone seemed more or less alright. Rafe was tired, but that didn’t worry me. In fact, a cheerful Rafe in the morning would have been far more disturbing. Daniel was as cool and distanced as ever. He gave me a curious look when he saw me, but didn’t mention anything about me having a mental breakdown in front of his bedroom door. Justin was quiet, but that could easily be attributed to the fact that he was reading. And Abby… I tried to get a good look at her fingers to see if I could spot the wounds that would confirm everything had really happened the way I thought it did. It was possible, of course, that the small stitches into her skin had healed quickly and faded to invisibility overnight. Still, I thought that if I could just see something, like a tiny speck of blood that had dripped onto her sleeve, I would know.

But she kept her hands busy, and when they weren’t busy, she kept them close to herself, half-way inside her sleeves. I’m still not sure whether it was deliberate or incidental, but somehow, she never gave me a chance to really see them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments and/or kudos are, of course, very much appreciated! Mostly, this is for Taeyn, though. Ly <3


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